Quantum Break is one of the most innovative and memorable games I’ve played in years, even if it doesn’t count amongst my favourites.

The long-in-the-making Xbox One exclusive – a time-shifting third-person shooter conceived by Remedy Entertainment’s Sam Lake (Max Payne, Alan Wake) – is nothing if not daring. It attempts to raise the bar in performance capture and character modeling. It gives players time-themed abilities never before seen in an action game. Most importantly, it wades into new narrative waters, boldly combining interactive and passive storytelling mediums in ways never before tried.

But while I’m fascinated by and appreciate what Remedy has attempted, I’d be lying if I said all of it works.

Or even that the parts that work manage to work all the time.

Microsoft

The game’s time-themed tale puts us in the role of Jack Joyce – charmingly played by British Columbia’s own Shawn Ashmore (X-Men’s Iceman) – the black sheep brother of brilliant scientist William Joyce (The Lord of the Rings’ Dominic Monaghan), who’s managed to build a fully functioning time machine.

As fate would have it, the time machine is under the control of Jack’s longtime friend, Paul Serene (Game of Thrones‘ Aidan Gillen), who – somewhat suspiciously – has asked Jack to come in and help him with something to do with the project in the wee hours of the morning.

You can probably guess what happens next: Something goes awry with the machine and Jack finds himself part of a time shifting adventure upon which the future of humanity rests.

Bathed in a shower of chronon particles (theoretical quantum units posited by real scientists and discovered in Quantum Break by William), Jack finds himself gifted with time altering powers that range from creating localized bubbles of frozen time to rewinding time to reassemble collapsed structures. (We’ll get to these abilities in a bit.)

Microsoft

I should note that time travel stories usually don’t appeal to me. Despite how mightily writers try to create rules governing the mechanics of journeying through the fourth dimension, the end result never quite makes sense. Audiences always end up forced to swallow their logical doubts about potential paradoxes and parallel universes filled with endless possibilities. This is especially true when the story sends characters to or brings them from the past, as happens in Quantum Break.

Needless to say, Sam Lake and his team of scribes don’t manage to avoid this conundrum. Despite providing scads of information about the laws ruling their version of time travel – the primary of which is that you cannot change the past, that your efforts to prevent something from occurring will only end up causing it to happen in the first place – it just doesn’t make sense that a time traveler could neither accidentally nor freely choose to do something that would muck up the time line in some significant way.

The writers do, however, manage to pose some interesting questions that hint at ideas not fully explored in this game. For example, from the first act we begin hearing about the “End of Time,” an apocalyptic event that some characters have already experienced. It’s tantalizing in its possibilities. Imagine a world in which everything and everyone is forever frozen in time, except you. Sadly, we never actually get to visit this temporal Armageddon.

At least not in this game. Lake has gone on record saying Quantum Break lays the groundwork for future tales that could be told within a broader narrative universe, that it contains suggestions of what may come in the next instalment.

But that, of course, assumes that a next instalment happens.

Microsoft

More compelling than the story itself is the manner in which it’s told.

Each act begins with three or four playable parts, adding up to somewhere between one and two hours. These sections are followed by a “Junction” point, a short scene in which we take control of the game’s de facto – though not completely evil – villain, Paul, who is presented with a decision that we must make for him, such as whether or not to kill an innocent. This choice informs what comes next: A half-hour live action television episode focused on parts of the story that don’t directly involve Jack.

Remedy has essentially created and inserted a four-episode TV show – with the combined length of a feature film – into its game. It’s not going to win any Golden Globes (you can tell where Remedy spent money on actors, sets, and props and where it didn’t), but it looks about as good as most Canadian TV productions, is quite watchable, and – perhaps surprisingly – fits comfortably within the game’s narrative.

Unlike the long CGI cut scenes that sometimes come between chapters in other games, I actually found myself looking forward to Quantum Break‘s TV episodes. I was drawn into the story and interested in where it was leading. That I knew my actions within the game had some impact on what took place within the TV show – not just Paul’s decisions, but also the discovery of certain objects within the game – was just a bonus.

And the transition from CGI to live action and back again isn’t as jarring as you might expect. Credit for this goes to Remedy’s proprietary and pioneering performance capture techniques, which recreate the likenesses and facial expressions of actors with terrific authenticity, especially when viewed up close. Switching between game and show it sometimes feels like you’re simply seeing the actors in different lighting rather than in a different medium.

Unfortunately, the show ends a bit abruptly. I was expecting a fifth episode to play after the final act of the game, but was instead greeted by a credits scroll. Lake apparently wanted to the end the game as a game rather than as a show – which makes sense, since Quantum Break is destined to be categorized as a game. Still, threads from the show are left dangling – likely in anticipation of that still-uncertain sequel.

Microsoft

It’s perhaps telling that I’ve left the discussion of what we actually get up to in the game – manipulating time, shooting guns, and killing folks – to the end, because it feels like this might be where Remedy spent the least of its effort.

Don’t get me wrong; Jack’s time-shifting abilities – used against a murky corporate military commanded by Paul, many of whom are also capable of bending time to their will – are unusual and frequently spectacular.

For example, with the tap of a button you can create a localized bubble of frozen time, stopping enemies within it in place for a few seconds while firing a hail of machinegun lead into the bubble wall. When time resumes all the bullets will begin moving again and slam into your hapless foes with a huge amount of kinetic energy, flinging them backward.

It’s also fun to create time shields to block and get out of the way of incoming fire, time dodge around and behind enemies before they know what’s going on, and throw grenade-like time blasts powerful enough to kill enemies.

And the effects that accompany all of these time-altering shenanigans are fantastic. When time freezes we often see debris and victims hanging in midair, where Jack can push them around almost as though they were in zero G. Later in the game some time-shifting enemies freeze at the moment of their death, suspended after being blown off their feet.

Microsoft

All of this said, the action often feels a bit slapdash.

Encounters – generally set in bland open areas – tend to be pretty similar to each other. Jack uses his time shifting abilities – which evolve in terms of range and power, but not sophistication – in the same ways on a limited variety of enemies time and again while relying on an awkward automatic covering system as he reloads or waits for his abilities to recharge. Rinse and repeat. There’s simply not enough variety.

Platformer-style areas in which Jack has to use his time abilities to traverse structures as they repeatedly collapse and reassemble themselves can be a bit more imaginative. But these events are rare and made more frustrating later in the game due to a weird time stutter effect – represented as bright bursts of light floating in the air – that blinds the player and makes actions that require careful timing (like jumps across gaps) hard to pull off. This strange visual effect becomes an almost constant presence/nuisance – even in firefights – for a couple of acts. I honestly felt at one point as though it was going to cause me to have a seizure.

And even though each of the five acts feels short, they’re not always packed with action. There were times when I spent 20 minutes or more just exploring, looking for and reading optional notes and objects scattered around the environment. These notes and emails provide important insights into characters and their motives and are fun to read, but they interfere with the game’s rhythm and should have either been shortened or better integrated so as not to gum up the action.

Microsoft

All of that said, I can’t deny that I’m still thinking about Quantum Break more than a week after finishing it. Its terrific performance capture, melding of seemingly disparate narrative mediums, and spectacular time-shifting effects leave an impression. I’m glad to have played.

And I’d happily dive into a sequel, should one ever be made – if not to learn how Sam Lake ties up the loose ends left by his first time-shifting tale, then to see if with a second chance he can wrangle all of these forward-looking ideas and distill them into a more evenly paced and consistently entertaining experience.

I’m far from sure Quantum Break will become the system-selling exclusive hit that Microsoft needs to start catching up with Sony in this generation of consoles, but at the very least it shows that the game giant is at some level still invested in taking risks. There’s hope yet for the Xbox faithful.

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